Thai Climate Change advocate Aminta Permpoonwiwat has caught public attention with her though provoking and impactful speeches and debates. Her choice of words powerfully touched the audience’s hearts especially when educating about a topic close to her heart Climate Change or Global Warming.
From a shy little girl turned excellent speaker, Aminta admitted that in order to capture people’s attention, the speaker requires immense understanding of the society and the world as a whole. In short, the speaker has to develop a good knowledge herself before delivering it to the audience.
Together with fellow highschoolers from all over the country, Aminta organized a sister-to-sister style educating program. The project is called “Youth Mentorship Project” or YMP. The reason behind this initiation is her realization that the core issue accountable for social problems present today is the unequal opportunity to education.
For many years, YMP has been making a difference in various vulnerable communities with the understanding that not everyone enjoys sitting in the classroom studying. As she is a teenager herself, she deeply understands and can connect with age-alike peers very well; she utilizes the means of teaching in an approachable and enjoyable way while at the same integrating knowledge on climate change.
Aminta acknowledged the importance to take into account the education inequality; also, the urgency to educate people on the effects of climate should be taken into serious consideration too. She and her family experienced first-hand that people from agricultural background do not even know how to handle progressive and continual natural disaster in the future. Thus, learning inside as well as outside the classroom is key to sustainably solve climate and environmental problems.
She believes in the power of communication; that’s why she used her excellent communicative skills in driving many climate-related projects. She understands the position Thailand is situated and share it with other youth from all over the world in the conference of Youth4Climate. On top of that, she is also the youth delegate to give speech on national stage.
She believes that youth power is more powerful than some believe. Knowledge is meant to be shared. Aminta said, “We want to ingrain the love for learning in the young. Not every enjoy studying in the classroom, so opening their mind and bring positivity to them could help them with their future career path and better quality of life. From a kid who really hates English, after participating in YMP, they realize that English can be fun too!”
The world is connected. After having had the chance to share knowledge with the children, she came to realize that climate change affects people in the domino effect manner. Everything in the world is connected: one thing always affects other things. Learning about climate change should make seen the interconnectedness of the effects of climate change which seem far but in fact is around us all.
Friendship creates change. Aminta as a delegate from Thailand joined the conference “Youth4Climate” which brought together nearly 400 youths from over 186 countries to share about climate and environmental issues.
Everyone is capable for change. “We all can save the world in myriad of ways. Nowadays, youths are more aware of climate change. The challenge is to change the realization to action. Think about what skills we have to make a change. Small actions when add up can result in big difference. For me, after joining speech club, it made me realize that I love communication. So, I want to use this skill to make a difference by teaching other and using my voice to make heard crucial issues”
Lately, she has been selected to be one of the two Thai delegates from 81 applicants from the first round and 15 eligible interviewees to join the ECOSOC Youth Forum of the year 2023 at United Nations Headquarters, New York, the United States.
Let's take a look back at some of her powerful speaking performances at TSX 2021. https://youtu.be/uYZAiRstnfo
